Navigation and service

You are here:

Service

From Actin Flow to Cellular Forces

Benjamin Winkler

Universität Leipzig

begin

23.Jan.2014 14:00

venue

Seminarraum 2001, Geb. 04.16

Theorie Seminar

ICS-2: Theorie der Weichen Materie und Biophysik

The retrograde actin flow in neural growth cones is a steady centripetal flow of filamentous actin from the edge of the growth cone to its center. The driving forces are the polymerization forces at the edge of the actin gel (balanced by a tension in the cellular membrane) and active stresses caused by myosin motors in the central region of the cone (Lin&Forscher 1996). By taking high resolution LSM-images of model system growth cones (NG108) over a longer period, the retrograde flow was computationally calculated. The resulting vector field was then thoroughly analyzed and from there internal stresses and force densities were derived.

Central to this analysis and crucial for the resulting values and their fluctuations was the exact extraction of the flow field. The flow detection algorithm will be presented in some more detail.